The mysterious knight rides to the tsar's palace and jumps very high to tear down the princess's portrait, but misses by "three logs".

Ivan summons Sivko-Burko, rides to the tsar's assemblage and jumps very high to tear down the portrait, but misses it by two logs.

The princess serves beer to the guests and hopes to check if any one of them wipes his brow with the bunting, but no luck on the first day, neither in the second.

[1][2] Russian scholarship classifies the tale as type 530, "Сивко-Бурко" ("Sivko-Burko"), of the East Slavic Folktale Classification (Russian: СУС, romanized: SUS): the foolish third brother holds a vigil on his father's grave and is rewarded a magical horse named Sivko-Burko, which he rides to reach the princess atop a tower.

[4] August Leskien acknowledged that the "numerous" Slavic variants "almost universally begin" with the father's dying wish for his sons to hold a vigil for his coffin or dead body at night.

[5] Vladimir Propp, in his work The Russian Folktale, argued that the test in the tale type involves the cult of ancestors, since the third brother is the only one who fulfills the dead father's request.

[9] Following Propp's arguments, researcher T. V. Mzhelskaya, based on archeological evidence, suggests that the motif of the "horse in the cellar" integrated into Russian folklore via a nomadic people of the Eurasian steppe.

[18] Scholarship notes that, in variants from Eastern Europe, Russian and Finland, the princess is not located atop a Glass Mountain, but is trapped or locked in a high-store tower.

After they marry, the Boyards on the Tsar's court lie that Ivan's brothers boast that they can accomplish impossible tasks.

As a result, the Tsar sends Ivan's brothers on dangerours errands, such as to capture a pig with golden bristles.

[4] Russian folklorist Alexander Afanasyev collected a variant named "Царевна Елена Прекрасная" (Tsarevna Yelena Prekrasnaya; "Tsarevna Yelena, the Beautiful"): Prince Ivan stands at his father's grave and longs for the beautiful Princess Helena the Fair.

Sensing his son's deep longing, the father's spirit appears to him and summons a horse to help the prince to gain the affections of the fair princess.

[27] Alexander Afanasyev collected another Russian variant ("Сивко, Бурко, Вѣщій Воронко"),[28] and a Belarusian one (originally "Конь със Злато-Серебряной Шерсткой",[29] "The Horse with Golden-Silver Skin"), all grouped under the name "Сивко-бурко" (Sivko-burko).

[35] In Ukraine, a previous analysis by professor Nikolai Andrejev noted an amount between 16 and 20 variants of the tale type.

[14] In a Ukrainian tale, "Коршбуры попелюхъ" or Korsbury-popeljuh ("Dirty Cinder-boy"), given in abridged form by English folklorist Marian Roalfe Cox, the hero tames three wild sea horses that have been grazing the king's fields.

[38] In another tale with the title "Дурень-Терешка" ("Fool-Tereshka"), the king places his daughter on a Glass Mountain, and announces that whoever reaches her, shall have her for wife.